tinyBuild, Inc. (TBLD.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the tinyBuild's Half Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to the management team of tinyBuild. Alex, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, and thanks, everyone, for joining for our H1 2025 results. We're going to dive straight in here with a disclaimer that I'm sure everyone has read. And presenting today is myself and Jaz. A couple of words about myself. I've been in the industry for over 20 years, have been in games nonstop ever since I dropped out of high school, which is for another day of a story. But I've been a journalist, a marketing specialist and a producer on many different titles in different industries. And for the past, depending on how you count 14 years, I have been the CEO and founder of tinyBuild. Jaz, do you want to say a few words about yourself?

Sure. I'm the CFO. I've been working in finance for over 20 years before joining tinyBuild in 2021, just before the IPO. And I was appointed as CFO 2 years and a little bit ago.

So today, we will go through the operational review, then we'll take a deep dive into finances and talk about strategy. And we do have a lot of questions. So hopefully, we will have a very fruitful Q&A. With that said, the way to summarize the operational review is that we are back in the game. Jaz has been in his position for the last couple of years. And to say that the last couple of years have been challenging is an understatement. But we believe that we are on the right track right now because we're seeing that our strategy is paying off. Specifically, our strategy to own intellectual property and have the control and flexibility to be able to scale those IPs into franchises is paying off. And it is showing not only on new releases, but also on our back catalog, which we'll take a deeper dive into. We also have possibly the strongest -- well, objectively the strongest pipeline ever in the company's history because we currently have 4 titles sitting in the Steam 100 most wishlisted chart. If you are unfamiliar with this, just Google for Steam top wishlist, and it gives you a chart of the most wishlisted titles on the platform, which is the biggest PC game distribution platform in the world. And the wishlist is essentially when someone goes to a game page wishlist, press the little wishlist button, and they express interest in the game, which means that they will be following it for news and updates, and they will also be notified when the game launches. Now we've also been very focused on cost management and data-driven capital allocation. So Steam as a platform and the consoles as well have been evolving over the years to give us as developers and publishers, more tools to engage with our audiences and gather data, data on what players like and what they don't like. We're able to test our games really early on and allocate capital based on what works, and it also allows us to fix whatever doesn't work. So it has been an incredibly data-driven journey for the past couple of years. And within the current game industry climate, focus on cash generation is key for us. Cash is king, we all know that. Just a few highlights here. We have had a really interesting first half of the year with mostly back catalog releases. You can see that 100% of our revenues is attributed to back catalog. We currently have over 90 games in our portfolio. We have generated close to $7 million, $6.8 million cash from operations, and most of our revenue still comes from our own intellectual property. And to illustrate that, we can see this chart over here on the right-hand side, 85% of our revenue comes from our own IP, which means that we have a degree of control and flexibility when we do find something that is successful. And for context, a new IP being successful is extremely more difficult than expanding an already popular intellectual property. And if we take a look at the left-hand side here, we see that the revenue concentration has actually gone up in terms of titles in the first half year of 2025, and that is mostly due to the runaway success of our console launch of the game debt side. I will touch upon that in the strategic review with the case study a little bit later, but it just shows that a 5-year-old game can deliver very meaningful revenues with continued support. Now before anyone wonders why there is no great chart, this is because of our definition of a newly launched title. A newly launched title is something that has launched in this calendar year for the first time commercially. So if anything launched in the previous years into early access or on one platform, that will be considered back catalog by our definition. So for the full year results, we expect to see a similar revenue mix as in the previous years because we have some new launches coming in the second half of the year that are defined as new launches. But this really shows everyone how the work on back catalog, which is easy to not focus on or think that it's irrelevant is actually playing out. We have revenue growth despite not launching any new title with a few exceptions in the first half of the year. And with games like Deadside coming to consoles with Drill Core coming to 1.0 and more platforms, it is a really healthy back catalog that is the backbone of the business. And with that, let's dive into the financials before we talk about strategy.

Hello. Just to start, I'd like to share with everybody. Last time after the presentation, I got the feedback from some investors that I was looking excessively serious, possibly sad. And I'm very pleased to wear a full genuine smile today on this good set of numbers. Starting with net game revenues on the left-hand side, we see for the first time in 2 years, a pickup in revenues from H2 2024 to H1 2025. This is primarily driven by the success of Deadside launched on console, but also from a strong performance across the whole back catalog. As the share of own IP revenues increased, so increased the flow-through, so higher gross margins, and that is the primary reason for the big jump in adjusted EBITDA. It's very difficult. We will be able to maintain the same level of gross margins going forward. But the second reason for the big jump in EBITDA is also a strong cost control. H1 2025 is the first 6 months in which we see the full effect of the cost initiative management put in place starting from the end of 2023 and Q1 2024. Q1 2024 and H1 2024 still had a bunch of one-off costs related to redundancies. So this is the first time we see a clean 6 months -- first 6 months of the year with a new cost base. Right here, right now, we believe we have the right cost base. We are in no rush to increase or decrease to touch anything. We think we have rightsized the business for the current opportunities. On the right-hand side, software development declined again in the first half of the year. That's mostly timing. Again, we think we have achieved the right size in terms of investments as well. So if you do the average between H2 2024 and H1 2025, you have roughly where we want to be going forward in terms of investments in new titles. Drilling a little deeper into the profit and loss. If we just look at the breakdown of revenues here in the table, the first 2 lines show a very interesting trend. We have presented platform deals as the main problem we had on revenues for the past couple of years. And here, again, platform deals, the second line under development services declined 93%. Well, the good news is that they're now close to 0 at $100,000. So we don't expect any further weight on revenues going forward. And the even better news is that based on that, if you just look at game revenues growing 10% and events revenues growing 27%, the underlying growth -- revenue growth we are seeing is double digit. Moving from revenues to 2 big decline, cost of sales and admin expenses. In cost of sales, you have, first and foremost, as I mentioned, the positive impact of a more favorable revenue mix. So higher share of own IP means higher flow-through of revenues. And also at the margin as a lower amount of amortization of debt expenses. In admin expenses from $10.6 million to $7.3 million, you have the full impact of our cost savings. And as I mentioned, the current cost base is the one we think is appropriate for the business. Going down to the adjustment to get to adjusted EBITDA. Impairments were also reduced from $3 million to $1 million. In the $1 million, there is mostly an adjustment to the value of Level 0 extraction. Again, we launched to strong success the first few days, but that failed to achieve a longer-term success after that minimal contribution again for share-based expenses. And in the other, you find the one-off positive contribution from a legal settlement, which resulted in a reduction in owed royalties. All in all, we achieved an EBITDA of $4.2 million for the year. How we get to that number from revenues all the way down to EBITDA, I want to flag here that H1 was particularly low in terms of marketing costs due to the low number of new releases. Only one new title was launched in H1. And also in the second half of the year, we will have alongside new launches, an increase in amortization of debt investments. That, combined with what I mentioned earlier about the revenue mix points at a lower margin for the second half of the year. In terms of cash flow, what I want to call out here is cash flow from operations increasing from $2 million to $6.9 million. Most of the delta is explained by what flows through via the P&L. But I also want to comment on net working capital. There is still a $3 million drag on net working capital. We believe we have now achieved a much more reasonable level in terms of net working capital, and we expect a smaller weight from that side going forward. Investment in software development decreased 28% from $8.7 million to $6.2 million. But as I mentioned, that is mostly timing. A little bit more on investment in development, 6.2 million in the first half of the year. Here, you see the progression, the peak in 2022 and how we adjusted that to the current level. And on the right-hand side, you see the breakdown by project. We still have a large number of projects we are working on announced and unannounced, and we're also working on some back-catalog titles. No project is too big compared to the others, and we have over 5 projects with an annual spend of over $0.5 million. In terms of balance sheet, we've already talked about the net working capital delta. So let's go straight to the net cash position. From December 2024, $3.1 million to the end of June 2025, $4.6 million. Our cash position has improved. There is a little bit of seasonality in there. December cash balance is always slightly underestimated due to the amount of revenues which are booked in Q4 for the Christmas season and with the cash received in January and February, but still a very solid number, and we remain deadly focused on cash and cash generation. Here is the cash utilization bridge from $3.1 million at the end of last year, at $8.6 million in terms of cash profit, take away $3 million net working capital drag software development of $6.2 million. And M&A is the disposal of Red Cerberus, our QA business in Brazil. With that, over to you, Alex, for the strategic review.

Thank you so much, Jaz. Just a couple of words on our 5-year plan. We always share this slide and one of the things that I believe is important is to be consistent. So one of the things that I'm really excited about, and we've been talking about this since we went public in 2021 is cross-media. And in video games, it's actually much easier to have a video game come out that's a new IP that suddenly reaches millions upon millions of players. And this is very different from other media formats, I think television or movies, cinema, et cetera, because those industries are much more gated. So we believe that we are in a unique position to leverage successful video game IP and take that to cross media. And this has always been the plan. And if you want some verification for this, just search for Hello Neighbor cartoon. It's an animated show that we have been working on. We have 2 seasons out on YouTube. And the third season is coming up. We're also working on a movie for Hello Neighbor, our prime IP and the movie for Kingmakers that has been announced last year with Story Kitchen, the same production company responsible for the original Sonic movie that kind of shifted the whole trend of the new game adaptations into a positive trend. So we are excited about our 5-year plan, and we are sticking to it. Now let's talk about a short case study for a game called The King is Watching. If you follow me on social media, you know that this has been our top 1 game release in terms of concurrent players. So whenever a game launches in the first few days, it usually has its peak of concurrent players. And this is our highest peak of CCUs or concurrent players that we have ever seen. And it's also our top 3 launch on Steam overall if we look at about 2 months launch window. Now it is a new IP. It is a Roguelite Kingdom Builder. And if you really like Roguelite games, I highly encourage you to try it. One of the things that is really exciting about this game is that it has a relatively small budget. It had a short development cycle of under 18 months from start to finish. And it is a testament to our strategy of internal team structure. So what we do internally is we have these groups of producers that work independently of one another, and we empower them and encourage them to make quick decisions. There is a long post on social media and on our website, I believe, about a case study that dives deeper into this. But long story short, we play tested this game about a year into development, identified a lot of issues, fixed them based on player feedback and the direct result of that is the current launch success. And now we have learned over the years, like I mentioned before, that when you have a successful IP, it's very important to have a plan going forward to continuously expand upon that IP to add updates and reengage players. And we are sure doing that. Really happy with the team, and this is really a demonstration of not just our marketing capability, but our team culture because I like being surprised when something goes really well within our teams, and I find out about it, and it's a really pleasant thing, and I'm not the bottleneck, right? So we are very decentralized at that in that regard. Now let's talk about the elephant in the room, Kingmakers. Last year, we announced it to insane virality across all platforms. So we got tens of millions of views on our announcement trailer. And what's important to keep in mind here is that we have announced it with a trailer that showed a lot of technology that players have never seen before. And it's one of those situations when the technology investment of over 4 years pays off just from the first frame from the first short video and players immediately engage with it. So right now, the game is top 9 on the Steam wishlist. We are working really hard with the development team to make sure that whatever we release meets and hopefully exceeds player expectations, and that is not an easy task. So the technology play here has paid off. We're working really hard and the pressure that we have from the amount of wishlist is really hard, really big, really real. And we are going to do everything we can to launch it at the right time with the right content within the launch build. Now talking about technology, one of the things that we have talked about previously, and it's difficult to quantify before you see results is Deadside. So Deadside is developed by Bad Pixel Studios. We have acquired them in 2021. And the game was an early access on Steam for 5 years. The thing is the genre is a massive multiplayer or an MMO survival shooter. And there are not that many games like that because from a technology standpoint, they are extremely difficult to develop. Most people will assume that a game will work at 20 players per server in terms of a multiplayer game and that it will be easy to scale it to 50 or 70 players on a large map with a lot of interactable objects, et cetera. It's not. So the hypothesis we had last year was, okay, this technology is very unique. It's very difficult to develop. So let's see if we can make a spin-off from it. So last year, we launched Duckside, which was in development for less than a year, leveraging the technology of Deadside, and it was a commercial success. So now with 2 games based on the same engine, we took a look and identified a couple of pieces that we're missing in this puzzle to scale it even further. One was modding support. So modding, also known as modifications is when a game allows itself to insert user-generated content. So think different game rules, different maps, the ability to modify variables in the game, et cetera. And this moding support has been released about 6 weeks ago for Duckside. We already have about 200 modifications for the game live. And about half of the audience on Deadside right now spends their time within the game on modified servers, not on what we designed, on what the users design. And that's a really good sign because the community gets really engaged, is really creative. So we are excited on continuing to developing that. Now the other piece that is missing from the Deadside engine is procedural map generation. In these kind of games, you have a huge open world and this open world is well filled by us as developers, designers, level designers, et cetera. And that takes a lot of time. And what we wanted to do is make it so that the game is procedural. So we have an algorithm that builds out unique experiences for gamers whenever they launch the game. It's called a wipe in this game genre. So people will play a game for a week, 2 weeks or a month. And then the game resets and then you have a completely new map, which we don't have yet. We are working on it. We are making great progress and are excited to launch it. And this is -- unlike the whole Neighbor franchise, it is more of a technology play when you share technology between studios that is unique to our company and then are able to scale it into something bigger. A few words about the pipeline. We already talked about the 4 titles that are in the top 100 chart. And I've already seen some questions about Hozy. So I will highlight that because Hozy at #4 here is one of those titles that we have identified a clear niche. We know exactly who the players are. We know how to target them, and we know that they're getting really excited about the game. So acute observers will have noticed that the game is climbing the top wishlist charts at a very steady pace. And since right now, it is after 4:00 p.m., we have just announced game #11 called The Lift. The announcement came out just over an hour ago. It's a game developed by our internal studio called Fantastic Signals. I encourage everyone to check out the trailer for it. And there will be a lot of let's play videos because the way that we're shifting our marketing is we really want players to play our titles. So we just announced a game that is actually immediately playable. So people watch the trailer, go like, okay, well, I may like it, oh, you can actually play it right now. So people will make their own determinations on if they like it or not, not just based on the trailer marketing material, but on their own experience, which is really exciting for me. Now let's talk about multimedia a little bit more. So our Hello Neighbor tree here continues to grow. As a reminder, we have several million books sold based on the Hello Neighbor series. We have 2 seasons of our anime series live on YouTube right now with Season 3 coming up soon. And we have the movie in ongoing production. I can't share that many details. But what I can say is that the script is done. The script is really good, and it's written by one of the writers of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie. And Hello Neighbor 3 is an active development with plenty of development logs by the original creator of the franchise. And this is what I mean when I say that when we own IP and have infrastructure to be able to continuously develop it, we can have the original creators be involved in the original game. And then sometime later after taking a break and having some inspiration, come back for one of the sequels. And this creates this ecosystem where we're able to unlock value over -- well, over a decade, to be frank, because the original, Hello Neighbor was announced way back in 2016, which is almost 10 years ago. Now closing remarks before we go off into Q&A. I still believe in our core strategy, which is we're a global developer and publisher. We focus on intellectual property and unlocking value of that IP through scaling it through -- by becoming franchises. And now it's not just about the law, the story, et cetera, it's also about technology because if we have unique technology internally, we're able to scale it into franchises across multiple games and then across multiple media formats when those games become successful. So our outlook, the Board remains confident that the company has adopted the right strategy and that we are on track to deliver results within expectations. And with that, let's dive into Q&A. I know that we have quite a few questions here. Jaz, I uploaded some that I've seen submitted that we can talk about. And I also see that we have quite a few new ones that were submitted during this presentation. So how shall we go about it?

So I'm happy to ask you some questions, and we can start with the launch and marketing strategy. I grouped the ones we have received before the call, and then we go through the new ones in turns. So starting with Kingmakers, what is the new launch strategy for Kingmakers, Sand and Streets of Rogue 2?

Okay. Well, those are actually very different titles, right? So for Kingmakers, it is important to live up to the expectations of the original fantasy that we set out for the announcement trailer. And with games that are more sandboxes, it is going to be super important to give players the tools to express themselves and to make sure that it feels quite unique. One of the things that we've been emphasizing on with Kingmakers is that it is going to be a co-op game quite some time into development when we tested the game in multiplayer, we realized that it is so much more fun. So it is going to be a multiplayer shooter action strategy, RTS game. That's a mouthful, but I'm really excited about that one. Now with Sand, and I'm actually going to merge this with another question that we had submitted. So Sand is a very unique case. It's a player versus player long session-based game, where players build these giant walkers, we call them tramplers to walk across a desert planet of Sophie, gather a root and if they're lucky, evacuate or extract onto the orbit, sell that route, make their trampler even better and then the cycle continues. When we were play testing that one, we have been noticing that the game appeals to a very wide audience of both PvP and PvE players. So the question that was submitted here, and I love product-related questions, please submit them, is that we had some backlash when we announced a game mode that is -- players refer to it as a closing store mechanic. Essentially, in our early play test, we had a wide open world with no concrete goal where players would just scatter around wherever they want it. But we saw that when you gather players together in a more compliant area over time, then it becomes much more fun. So when we play tested that, we made the announcement that we're going to do this game mode, players were built. And when we got those players, especially the louder voices into a closed play session of this game mode, the sentiment internally within our communities actually turned to more positive. So we're actually excited about that. But the key with Sand is going to be to launch it not just on PC, but also on console because the game has this really great rhythm when you have a phase of relaxation when you're exploring the world and then a really intense phase of either PvE player versus environment or PvP player versus player interactions. And that is when your hands start to sweat. And it also plays really well on a controller. So with sound, we're making sure that the game launches as a full 1.0 release on PC and at least one console. It is a monumental technical challenge that we're going to -- well, we are working on overcoming. And Streets of Rogue 2 is a completely different beast because it is a sequel to one of our most beloved games. And when we announced it and did some play tests, both public and internal, we noticed that players just need a lot more content because the original spend half a decade in early access and continued development and the sequel did not spend that much time in development. So the sequel needs to meet those expectations, which is why we are taking the time. Jaz, hopefully, that answered that question.

Yes. The second question is, will you avoid clashes with other major releases?

The short answer is yes. We're not seeing a trend where especially AAA companies will do shortened marketing cycles. A few months before the launch, they just go like, "Hey, we're going to launch in a few months. Here's also a beta and here's all of our marketing needs." And we like to have the flexibility to choose a date that makes sense for the product based on ever-evolving market conditions.

Another one on Kingmakers. Will Kingmakers ship with a demo -- with a public demo?

To be determined.

How will you position early access versus 1.0 marketing?

Just one second, I need to...

I'm quite happy I have cat rather than 2 dogs.

I'm so sorry, apparently a field mouse went into my office here and my dogs tried to kill it. The mouse is still live. If anyone was wondering, it ran back out. I'm so sorry about it. Now let's get back to the Q&A.

So the question was, how will you position early access versus 1.0 marketing?

There was really not that much difference. With 1.0, you're kind of saying that, hey, here's the final product and maybe there are going to be ongoing updates. When you release an early access game, then you're essentially promising a full development cycle. So you need to manage expectations on that development cycle, and that's how you position the marketing. So it's a full promise delivered on day 1 with 1.0 versus a long-term promise with early access.

And how should we interpret changes in Steam wishlist rankings?

Well, whenever a game is steadily growing in the Steam wishlist rankings, that is a very good sign. If a game is stagnating or losing positions, that's not a very good sign.

Yes. For the record, users can wishlist, also unwishlist the game. So you can actually go backward in the rank. Second bunch of questions is on platform and porting strategy. Will consoles be supported before 1.0 where possible?

Well, the short answer is yes.

What's in-house versus external for porting and at what cost?

Right. So porting is a very interesting one. Most of our internal studios do have internal porting capacity. But what we do is we will still outsource the bulk of the work and then bring it in-house. Porting is -- it can be a very significant expense. So we decide on a case-by-case basis when it makes sense for what type of game. And the main thing is for it to not distract the team from delivering a good product. So however that shapes up, if it's an external studio that doesn't have capability, it needs to benefit the product, first and foremost.

New question on back catalog. Do you see other avenues to further monetize the back catalog?

Yes. And that is bringing it to more platforms, which really well coincides with the previous question on porting. So bringing games to more platforms, continuously updating them, bringing out new DLC, new free pieces of content to reengage the existing audience. All of those things help our back catalog, which is why there is a lot of work being done.

What does the post-2026 pipeline look like?

We do have games that are in production slated for that time line. I will caveat that, that we are leaning towards more shorter development cycles, and that has shown to be fruitful for us. So it's kind of like asking predicting the future. I wish I could I really can't. We don't know what the trends are going to be, but we have a hypothesis on where the industry is headed.

What's the status of the Kingmaker and the Hello Neighbor films?

So I can't comment on where the Kingmakers movie is. What I will say is, like I said in the presentation, the Hello Neighbor movie script is done, and it is being produced by our friends at Boulderlight Pictures. They are a movie production company famous for movies like Barbarian and more recently, Weapons. If you haven't seen Weapons, please check it out. It just came out on streaming a couple of days ago.

Next is on localization. Has your approach evolved on localization?

Yes. We have been adding more and more languages, and we have been hiring community managers for specific local markets to not just localize text in games, but also marketing material and social media posts, which has been helping us with local presence. We have also been alongside localization, working on localized marketing campaigns for games that we believe are relevant to specific regions.

And the last one of the pre-submitted questions for you is about the terms of the publisher deal. Have they changed in recent years?

Well, publishing deals, they are always evolving because the industry is evolving. So are they changing? Yes, in an evolutionary basis.

Okay. I'll take a couple of questions on accounting. The first one is straightforward. How do we amortize the capitalized development cost? We amortize that over 3 years, starting on the date of launch of the game, and we amortize them over 3 years, 40%, 35% and 25% per annum. Next one is on revenues. Are the revenues reported gross or net of platform fees, they are net of platform fees? So it's the money we actually receive from the platforms after they've taken the cut. Now a couple of questions on capital allocation and similar. Will you cancel treasury shares to offset dilution? There are advantages in the EBT we have set up. So we have set up this EBT, this trust for employee benefit, which sits offshore where the treasury shares are sitting. Canceling the treasury shares is a possibility that we have considered, we will consider. But at the same time, these are shares which can be used to reduce dilution on future equity awards. So net-net, the benefit could be higher in keeping them as they are for now. Second related question, how will you align executive pay with share performance? Well, mostly when it comes to Alex, he's the largest shareholder. Alex, maybe I should let you answer this question when it comes to myself.

Right. Well, so for myself, obviously, I'm [indiscernible]. I led the capital raise that we did over a year ago. For key employees, it's all about long-term recognition and compensation when it comes to the share price. So our executive team, our production team, our key people, we have a plan that directly rewards share performance in terms of stock awards. And I essentially want everyone's incentives to be aligned with my own.

Next is what's your plan to increase institutional ownership? Well, the plan is to deliver strong results. There is no better way to attract institutional investors than to beat consensus to see the market cap growing and to start getting everybody's interest. There is then a more commercial aspect to it, which is working with our nominated adviser, Zeus, to make sure that we have a good road show and everything else. We have worked with Zeus for many years now, and we are fully confident they can do a great job at that. Another question, why a small buyback now before major launches? Why not a small buyback now before major launches? Well, right now, we have a strong cash position, but we also have a number of investment opportunities. We continue to consider all options for capital allocation. And should we have excess cash, should we not have any interesting investment opportunities, we would definitely go down the buyback route alongside others. For now, we see some uncertainty in the second half. And as I said, some good utilization of cash in the operations. When and how will excess cash be returned to shareholders? A similar question or similar answer to the previous one. When we will dry up in terms of opportunities, we will start returning cash to shareholders. What we have now is the best pipeline ever, the strongest console launch in H1 with Duckside, a top 3 launch in the second half already with The King is Watching. So I think the -- we are seeing proof that the strategy is working, and it's a good time to put more money into these interesting opportunities. We can jump to the questions -- to the new questions online, which I can't see right now. Alex, can you see them?

Yes, I can see that people are saying that they're happy, you look happy, Jaz.

Jaz on the right-hand side, can you see a blue button that reads...

Can you share the current wishlist figure for Kingmakers or a sense of expected sales around launch? So I can take this one if you want. The public numbers we have seen for wishlist on Kingmakers is over 1 million. We don't disclose the exact numbers for commercial reasons. The next one is, what are the time lines for Hello Neighbor and Kingmaker movies? We have taken that. You say that 1,000-hour game model is preferable. I note that the sector-leading peers, [ ever play ], mentioned that for indie games, players prefer they not to be too difficult and to finish in a reasonable time frame. I was interested in your comments.

I will disagree with that respectfully because we are really, as an industry, competing for people's time. It's not just with video games, it's also with Netflix or any other streaming service [indiscernible] So the more time people spend in your games, the more players you're going to reach because of virality and the more long-term revenues you're going to generate. This is a debate that we have constantly going on internally. So for example, The King is Watching initially, it wasn't designed as a highly replayable game. And then during the play tests, we have seen that players really loved the replayability of it and wanted more of it. And I believe that contributed to its success. So designing games for time spent, I believe, is the way, at least in our segment. What I don't want to do is spend weeks, months of time on a feature in a game or on some sort of cut scene or piece of content that players experience only once because then it becomes the realm of diminishing returns as you have to continuously develop more for a possibly shrinking audience.

Considering the variety for Kingmakers, are there any discussions regarding M&A of road redemption games or broader discussion regarding continued partnership?

We do have discussions on how to make sure that the partnership is long term and to meet the expectations set by Kingmakers. We don't comment on M&A discussions or opportunities.

Would you consider uplisting from the AIMX segment of the LSE to enable greater access to the stock for international shareholders? I can take that. With regards to where we're listed on AIM, it's a good market for us for the current market cap for even a larger market cap. So no reason to change that. We have considered in the past, and we will consider in the future if it's possible, if it's appropriate to list on other exchanges alongside AIM, but very happy on AIM as we stand. Is AI helping both from a cost perspective in the business generally and also in speed of game development and rectifying various issues with games from a technical playing perspective?

Okay. On the latter part of the question, rectifying technical issues, no, it's not there yet. Where AI does help on a day-to-day basis is in admin of the business. It helps speed a lot of things up when it comes to documents, contracts, e-mail, et cetera. It does help on the game development process for inspiration. If, let's say, 2 or 3, 4 years ago, it took you days, if not weeks, to get some renders up for -- just to see how a game might look. Right now, you can get inspiration in, well, minutes and you can iterate through -- cycle through a lot of inspiration for your game. In terms of AI as a core development tool, I believe we are maybe 18 months away from that actually happening. A lot of people do want it to happen and are excited about the tools that we have. It's just that it's not there yet. And the whole chat-based image generation bubble is a bubble. We need a few of these tools to become more mature businesses that actually make money that then we can use in a consistent way and in a way that makes sense for our core development of video games.

Can you comment on Kingmakers release date and price level? And for the other top 100 wishlist on Steam titles you mentioned, can you give more color again on the release date?

We are not going to comment directly on the release dates of these games because there are a lot of factors that come in, in real time. I already mentioned Battlefield 6, somebody saying that they're launching in October. So we are evaluating what's right for each and every title considering where it is in development, what the calendar looks like and when it is the best time to launch those titles. Also on the price point, I did comment on this in our previous analyst calls. We are seeing a lot of pressure on consumers. So we are very sensitive towards pricing. We've seen a lot of titles launch at a very high price point that disappoint players. So we really don't want to disappoint players.

Okay. For Sand, would you consider changing to a game mode where you increase the environmental PvE difficulty over time? After 90 minutes or so, the difficulty should be so high that even cruise with legendary gear struggle to survive versus PvE?

Well, that's a thing about Sand. PvE, you can spend a lot of time on it and it becomes boring and generic. What we're seeing in our play test is that the PvP aspect of it is very, very unique. There is no other game out there that allows you to build your own custom huge chip, walking trampler that then dictates your strategy of how you approach enemies. We have seen some cursing matches in voice chat when play testing because the situations are so tense and so unique. So what we want to make sure is that those highlights are indeed the highlights of a potential players full week that they'll be talking about how they interacted with other players. But it's also about the comeback situation when you feel like you're about to lose a match. And then like last second, you grab your repair tool, you repair your generator and then you have saved yourself and you then turn around that are fixing your walker and you are the one that wins that PvP bell. Those are unique situations. That's what I personally live for. So to answer your question, probably no, not that much focus on PvE because we already see that the strongest part of the game is the occasional PvP counter.

Okay. I might take this next one. What do you see as the main factor influencing tinyBuild's current share price performance? So it's always difficult for us to comment on the share price. But what we think is the best way for us to push the stock price up is really just stay laser-focused on the numbers. It's important to tell the story and to tell it well, but really where we see the stock moving is on numbers. A day like today, when we can deliver strong numbers is a day where uncontroversially, the stock will react positively. And that's been the case. We will continue to keep our head down. Personally, our feeling on where the stock price sits right now is that there is still a discount for liquidity, for financial stability. So we are kind of taking that as a priority #1, focus on cash generation, increasing a little bit that cash buffer to make sure that everybody in the market understands that we are a very solid business financially and then delivering on the operations. And as Alex said many times, we now have a little bit more headroom to be extremely commercial about the size of the budget and the timing of the release. So we have a very data-driven approach. We follow the audience in the sense that when we have a stronger and stronger and even stronger validation from the audience, we are happy to put a little bit more budget and to have a little bit more flexibility on the release date to make sure that we meet those audience expectations. And the audience, the players these days are extremely demanding. They really expect a lot from a game, and we can deliver a lot from games as we've done with that side, as we've done with Kingmakers recently. So that's what we're trying to do. There is a comment about my smile. Thank you, guys. It's still a working smile, but thank you for noticing. Are this level of cost of sales sustainable over time? I'll take this one as well. So cost of sales includes the royalties paid out. And I commented that, that is a function of the revenue mix. With a very high own IP share of revenues, cost of sales will be low because we keep a higher share of the revenues. But we can't predict exactly how the breakdown of game revenues will come through across the whole portfolio. So H1 was particularly favorable in terms of revenue mix. We should not assume that, that is the standard going forward. Cost of sales will probably increase going forward. But where we have visibility is actually on admin costs on our operational cost, and that is set at the right level right now. Another question on the price for Kingmakers, which we already answered. Is there anything that you think -- is there anything that you think as shareholders can help tinyBuild with, Alex?

Good news when those news come, right? We're all in this together, and I really appreciate the community on X that we have some meaningful discussions on, not just about tinyBuild, but in general about the industry. So please follow me on X and let's engage and talk.

Another question. Will we see any partnerships with streamers on the upcoming releases?

Yes. We have been working on developing relationships with streamers, influencers, TikTokers, you name it. And with every game launch, we have a very thoughtful plan on which influencers will attract the right audience for the right game. So yes.

Next, a question on any share dilution plan. So we mentioned the equity awards and the desire to align all executives with equity ownership. Whether that's going to happen via a small dilution or using the EBT is to be seen. There are certain constraints we have to oblige, but it shouldn't be meaningful. And what was the rationale for switching brokers back to Zeus from Berenberg? Both brokers are exceptionally good. Sometimes for certain situations, one can be more nimble than the other. There is nothing wrong with Berenberg. We were very happy with Berenberg. We are very happy with us Zeus right now. And I think we answered all of the questions.

That's great, Jaz. Alex, if I may just jump back in, then thank you very much for addressing all those questions from investors today. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. But Alex, before I redirect investors to provide you with the feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I just please ask you for a few closing comments?

So I think the name of the game is consistency and making sure that you follow through. So this is exactly what we've been doing for the past 4 years that we've been listed and before then. It's always keeping your eye on the ball and sticking with what you believe in because so far, our strategy is paying off. We did hit a few bumps in the road that we have overcome. And right now, I am really excited for the full year and also for the years to come. So I'm in this for the long run, and I appreciate the support from everyone here.

Fantastic, Alex, Jaz. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of tinyBuild, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.